


colours in our skin

by Charis



Series: Watch Me Burn [5]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: (which is to say no negotiation at all), Accidental D/s, Accidental Kink Discovery, And Maybe a Hint of Plot, Cunnilingus, F/M, Femdom, Frottage, Gunplay, Malesub, Moments of Period-Typical Misogyny, Porn with Feelings, Praise Kink, Pre-Canon, Sub!Athos, Under-negotiated Kink, Undressing, dom!Milady, minor orgasm delay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 01:52:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8426050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charis/pseuds/Charis
Summary: “Oh,” she exhales in sudden understanding. “Like this, then?”

Everything has a beginning.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm 99% sure this one is Swellie's fault in some level, but I honestly don't even remember where it started anymore. Either way, thank you as always, darling!
> 
> Title from Florence + the Machine's "Spectrum".

There is something strangely calming about cleaning weaponry; since he had been given his first knife as a boy, he’s always found it that way. Oil and cloth at hand, the smooth motions of polishing and the gleam of steel had settled him the way few other things could, given him precious moments of quiet and stillness even when the world bustled around him. It has been no different with other weapons, and over the years when he needed to think he would often retreat into such a task.

He doesn’t need the retreat today, but the habit is long-ingrained and when Anne heads into the village that morning he takes advantage of the time alone all the same. It’s as easy as ever to lose himself in the rhythm as he works over a half-dozen blades, cleaning and oiling and putting them away, losing track of the passage of time as he works. The last piece he sets on the table is a pistol, retrieved from its wooden case, and he checks it over carefully, flint and pan and wheel, before he starts.

The quiet rustle of skirts and the barest whisper of floral perfume is the only sign he has of his wife’s return, and he doesn't look up from his work as she approaches, too intent on drawing the oiled cloth carefully back out of the pistol’s bore. She leans against his chair silently, waiting for him to finish tending to the barrel, and he can feel her warmth and the weight of her gaze intent on him.

“Why,” she asks finally, once he puts oil and rag aside, “do you have a pistol?” And, when he looks up at her quizzically, hands stilling on the weapon, “Swords are passed down through a family, but guns are new. I thought only soldiers and brigands had them.”

“It was a gift,” he explains. “From Thomas, for my last birthday -- to carry where a sword would be too much, he’d said, so that I can be safe.”

“From brigands and thieves?”

There’s a twist in her smile when he glances up that he can't quite unravel, an arch note in her voice he doesn't understand, and it makes him turn his attention from his work to her, setting pistol down to better study her. Something about this clearly bothers her, though he doesn’t know if it’s Thomas or the weapon or mention of such a part of society, and he hates to see her distressed. It makes him reach up, draw her down so he can kiss her, sweet and soft and desperate to wipe away whatever it is has put those shadows in her eyes.

She’s still smiling when they come apart but it’s less sharp now, and her gaze is thoughtful as she picks up the pistol and studies it. He watches, fascinated by her fascination, as she traces the filigree with one finger before testing its weight. “Have you ever used it?”

“Only on targets.” Her fingers have curled around the butt; he covers her hand with his, corrects her grip. “I hope I never have cause to do otherwise.”

“What other purpose can a pistol have, if not to be fired?” And she may well be right, when it is a tool meant to end lives, but he can admire its artistry all the same, the curves and the lines of it, hard steel and warm wood and the craftsmanship it took to make it. It is in that no different from a sword; only its newness differentiates it from the ancestral pieces in the armoury. He wonders if she sees any of that art, though, as she turns it back and forth, or if this is another of those ways women are unfathomably different from men.

His thoughts have carried him away, but they snap back into the present as she points the gun at the window, squinting as if aiming at a distant target. Once again he corrects her position slightly, brushes skin warm and silken as he tips her hand up a bit, turns her face, and she smiles and leans her head briefly into his palm. “Like this?” she asks.

He murmurs agreement, drinking in the sight of dark hair curling loose and untamed about her shoulders, the pale line of her arm as she holds steady. He could watch her forever, like this as easily as at a thousand other things, and it’s easy to forget that uncertain note when he’s mesmerised by her presence, by the still-shocking realisation that she is his -- that she chose it, that she wanted him and continues to do so, that they have a lifetime ahead of them to learn a thousand things together.

“Perhaps,” she says, almost musingly, “it’s not the brigands and thieves you need worry about.”

The barrel of the pistol swings away from the window, settles squarely on him. He pushes his chair back, almost stumbling in surprise. “Anne, wait, what are you --”

“Quiet,” she orders, pressing the muzzle against his forehead. There is nothing more than innocent amusement on her face, as if she is playing a game, and yet his breeches suddenly feel too tight. Shame floods him but does nothing to diminish the arousal. He swallows once, convulsively, before obeying, and watches Anne’s eyes widen, her breath catch.

“Oh,” she exhales in sudden understanding. “Like this, then?”

She may understand but he is still baffled, and so he just looks at her without a sound. She stands between him and the table, and though nothing has changed and she is still his Anne, dark curls haloing her sweet face, there is something mysterious and forbidding waking there which makes the pit of his stomach tremble, makes him feel as if he should lower his gaze, and yet he cannot, when hers pins him there. The gun drops -- not wavering, but lowering steadily; the barrel brushes against his mouth before she sets it against the underside of his jaw, and there is steel under the softness in her eyes and a slow-burning fire uncoiling in him, and he lets out a ragged breath, as much disappointment as relief, when she steps back.

He doesn't know what to expect and so he just waits, hands clenching and relaxing atop his thighs by turns. The air shivers between them, heavy with anticipation and some unspoken meaning, and it perversely just makes him harder. She studies him, expression inscrutable, but in the end when she smiles it is faintly smug.

“Stand up.”

The alacrity with which he complies startles him; he doesn't even realise he's on his feet until he hears the chair clatter to the floor behind him. She makes a disapproving sound somewhere low in her throat and something within him quails, but before he can even formulate an apology she steps away from the table, crossing to where a shaft of late-afternoon sunlight slants across the stone floor. She looks like a goddess of antiquity painted in shades of gold, otherworldly and the only thing real in the same breath, and then she turns and pulls her hair over one shoulder, baring the nape of her neck and the pale line of her spine to him and his mouth goes dry.

“Well?” she prompts when he does not move, and though she doesn't say anything else he knows what she’s waiting for. His feet are leaden and awkward as he hurried to close the space between them, and his fingers fumble in his haste to work the laces loose, enough that she reaches behind her, prisons one wrist. Her words are more gentle than her touch, a soft admonishment. “Slow down, Olivier. We have all the time in the world.”

And he doesn’t want to slow -- god, he wants his hands on her bare skin already, aches to feel it like silk beneath his fingertips, but he doesn’t want to do anything that might cause her to call another halt and so he draws in a breath, lets it out slowly. When he starts again tension crackles around them, heavy like the summer air, building like a storm towards something he does not know and cannot name and does not remember ever having felt before.

_Patience,_ he tells himself, _patience,_ and it should not be as difficult as it seems but it grows easier as he continues, losing himself in the sensations of cord sliding against his fingers and stiff brocade grazing his knuckles, the lulling rhythm of it all. He rids her of the bodice, pulls it over her head and hurls it somewhere across the room, uncaring, makes quick work of the hooks on her skirt and sends it following after, only to stifle a groan when he remembers there's still more between him and her skin. She laughs -- not the low sound he expects but something light and almost delighted, reminiscent of their tumbles in the fields -- and it emboldens him; he presses his hips into her, rocking his still-clothed cock against her backside, and for the briefest of moments she leans back against him before she seems to remember herself and spins away to face him once more.

The gun in her hand stops him from moving forward, tapping against his breastbone when he reaches for her. She shakes her head, curls tumbling around tantalisingly-bare shoulders. “Am I going to have to do everything myself, or can I trust you to only touch where you have been given leave?”

His breath hitches in; she smiles at it, just for an instant, thin and wry and enough to make his flagging erection rally when he realises she isn’t calling a halt to -- whatever this is. “No,” he mumbles, the word feeling thick in his throat.

“No?” she prompts, brows lifting, and he frantically searches for the missing word.

“No, mistress?”

An aggrieved sigh. “What manner of man calls his wife _mistress_?”

_A fool,_ he thinks, though he is ever and always a fool for her, but mistress is less than wife and he knows how nervous social mores leave her sometimes. “I’m sorry, milady,” he tries, and the gun shifts as she steps in, curls her fingers against his face, kisses him -- gently, so gently, and yet his skin is on fire from even that fleeting touch, hot and tight with need.

“Better,” she murmurs as she draws away. He aches, bereft after such brief contact, but she just turns and once again presents him with her back without a word. He continues, careful not to let his body so much as graze her own -- just fingers, just hands, working the tapes of her petticoats untied and letting them pool at her feet, struggling with the exquisite torture that is her corset lacing, fighting the urge to press his mouth to her nape or her shoulder or the pale knobs of her spine. He doesn’t know what she’ll do if he does touch her again, but he suspects it will only prolong this torment -- and why, he wonders, does he ache even more at such a prospect? He puts the unsettling thought aside as best he can, ignoring the throb of his cock in favour of concentrating on pulling the loosened corset up over her head, watching enthralled as the laces drag along her skin. Perhaps he could wrap them around her wrists, bind them above her head, drive her wild with mouth and hands until she begs for more --

The press of hard steel between his eyes stops him in the act of leaning in, jerking him back to reality. Anne’s standing there, chemise fallen to join the rest of the clothes discarded about her, and though her nudity should make her seem vulnerable it does nothing of the sort; if anything, he feels as if he is the one naked and laid bare with how she’s looking at him. “You forget your place, husband,” she chides.

_Above you,_ he thinks, but no matter the Bible he had learned in his youth the words seem false. He has found such joy with her that it seems unthinkable he could ever want a woman who would simply give way, no matter what social mores say should be -- unthinkable that he would ever want any other woman but her. _If this is wrong,_ he thinks, _then I have no interest in being right,_ and it should worry him more than it does. But it also makes him think of old stories in the books he’d stolen from the family library to read in the solitude of outdoors, and how in them pleasure was to be found in duty and service; those tales suddenly make more sense than they ever had before.

He does not even realise he has sunk to his knees until her hand settles against his jaw, coaxing his head up to look at her. Her thumb strokes along his mouth, a subtle caress, and when the breath shudders out of him she pushes it past his lips. There’s something shocking about the gesture, unexpected as it is, but as he presses his tongue up against the pad of her thumb it is her breath that comes out shakily, the smallest of moans. Her eyes are dark and hot as she gazes down at him; he would give anything to know what she’s thinking. A moment later she blinks, takes her hand away, and he feels all the colder for its absence, all the more worried for the uncertainty he sees in her eyes. “Olivier,” she murmurs, more than half a question.

His gun is still at her side, dangling loosely in her grip. He reaches out as if in a dream, curls her fingers more tightly about it, lifts it to draw the barrel back up until it presses into the tender flesh beneath his chin. “I am yours to command, milady,” is all he says. She must know -- though how could either of them have known, but for this innocent bit of play -- what this is doing for him, must see how his cock strains hard and heavy against his breeches, must see how he wants this, no matter that he’d never imagined it might be anything he _could_ want, that people might do, had never dreamed such a thing existed, and yet she does nothing at first, just watches him, and though her hand is steady her face is still open, vulnerable. He wants to call her name, to reassure her, but he is loathe to break the spell any further and so he just waits, aching and uncertain.

She pulls away suddenly, and he thinks he’s moved too far -- feels his heart plummet, but she just crosses the room to turn one of the chairs towards him before sitting. Her back is straight, her head held high; he thinks she could be a queen on a throne, and there is regal command in her voice as she bids, “Come here.”

It is an effort to pull himself to his feet again, limbs curiously languid and heavy with need. He manages, though, and the effort is rewarded with her smile when he settles before her once again. Her legs part to make room for him; the flowers of her perfume mingle with the arousal that glistens between her legs into a scent even more heady, and though it makes him impossibly harder, he finds he wants nothing more than to bury his head between her thighs and drown in her, nothing more than to please her in any way she might wish. When he dares to lay his cheek against the soft skin she tuts her disapproval and nudges him away with the gun. “Duty awaits you, husband.”

The laugh that escapes her at her own words is short-lived, transformed into a gasp as he wastes no time heeding them -- and why would he, when what he is being commanded to do is precisely what he desires? The taste of her is no less heady for being familiar now; if anything, he thinks she intoxicates him even more than usual, as if all of his senses have focused on her. The gun slips from his cheek around to the back of his neck, a cool steady caress balanced against her warm hand sliding into his hair and the slick heat of her sex against his mouth as he kisses her there. A glance up through his lashes shows him her eyes have half-lidded, a flush spreading across her pale skin. He teases her, tongue flicking out, little lapping strokes that soon have her hips bucking up against his face in an attempt to get closer, and he knows what she wants from him but he wants her to take it, to make him give it to her, to command him -- to see if together they can find that vast nameless _something_ that hovers just beyond his awareness, tantalisingly close. “More,” she insists, tangling her fingers into his hair and yanking, “god, _more_ ,” and the steady pressure of the gun pushes him in closer until he gives it to her, licks a steady stripe up her cunt. _More,_ the barrel cool against the base of his skull prompts, and he presses a sucking kiss to her clit. _More,_ the whimper it pulls from her says, clearer than words, and his fingers join his mouth in wringing sweeter cries from her yet, her thighs trembling and her slickness sweet on his tongue and this is enough, more than enough, this is all he wants -- his duty is his pleasure, and he surrenders to the demands of her body, gives her lips and tongue and teeth and the slide of his fingers into her wet heat, and her wail as she comes is the most perfect sound he’s ever heard.

He doesn’t stop as her grip on slackens once more -- keeps lapping at her, feeling her flutter around his fingers with aftershocks of pleasure. She’s soft under his touch, though as he draws her back up to a second peak (slower this time, softer but deeper, building towards a release that seems to quake up from deep inside her) she tenses again; the thighs he has hooked over his shoulders press in tight, and even if he’d wanted to move he couldn't -- but he doesn't, could stay there forever, drown altogether happily in her taste, die lost in her and consider it a triumph. But release him she does, once again, and when she pushes him away with a quiet whine (too overstimulated, no doubt, for the moment) he sits back on his heels. She looks wrecked, legs splayed carelessly wide and head falls back against the chair, pale skin flushed and beaded with sweat, and satisfaction uncurls in his belly; it still mystifies him, not only that he can do that to her but that she is willingly his.

Without her body to distract him, the needs of his own reassert themselves. His hands leave her thighs, drop to his breeches, suddenly desperate to work the buttons loose and relieve some of the tension there, but he stops when she shifts -- curiously boneless in the wake of her orgasms and yet no slower for them -- to point the muzzle directly at his crotch. Once again, his traitorous cock throbs all the more insistently with the added frisson of danger, no matter how false.

“I told you not to move your hands.” Her voice is calm, betrays nothing of how it had cracked on his name just moments before. “Disobey me again and I'll shoot it off. You don’t need it to please me.”

And he knows it’s just words, knows it’s a lie, but that doesn’t prevent the whimper that escapes his throat. He doesn’t understand where it comes from, doesn’t understand _why_ , but this is all taking that arousal higher, brighter, sharper. He thinks he will burst from it if she does not give him more. It’s not just his clothes; his skin feels tight, aching, burning in contrast to the cool steadiness of her gaze. “Anne --” he begs, before he catches himself. “Milady, please.”

One bare foot lifts to rest on his thigh, not quite touching his aching flesh; his fingers itch to curl around her ankle but he leaves his hands slack at his sides. “Tell me what you’ve earned, husband,” she prompts when he does nothing; the unspoken undercurrent says _for that is all you will get,_ and he wonders suddenly whether if he does not please her she will leave him like this, so hard he thinks he will burst and without permission to see to himself -- wonders why this thought should make him inexplicably even harder, wonders why the thought of disobeying does not even cross his mind.

_What have you done to me?_ he wants to ask, but he knows better than to say. She has bewitched him, bound him with her eyes and her smile and every bit of her being, and yet he would have it no other way -- would, he realises, kneel here willingly as long as she demanded it, would give her everything he can, mind and body and soul. He is hers, god knows, and perhaps he always has been, and with that there is only one possible answer.

“Whatever you think I deserve.”

She smiles at that -- not the triumphant smile he had expected, but something softer, unexpectedly gentle. “Good,” she murmurs, “very good,” and he warms unexpectedly under the praise. She turns in the chair, swinging both legs over one arm so she can better press the gun beneath his chin again, but the smile never wavers and he feels secure in that even when the hammer clicks back. “Show me your cock,” she orders.

He hastens to obey, unfastening the buttons of his breeches and unlacing his drawers with fumbling fingers. His cock curves up against his belly, hard and leaking, but the steel against his jaw is a reminder and he returns his hands to his thighs when he’s done, exhaling unsteadily as he awaits her next instruction. She studies him for what feels like an eternity, leaves him biting the inside of his cheek not to squirm under her regard, desperate for some contact, some friction to ease the ache in his flesh -- but she gives him nothing except the slow, barely-there caress of metal against tender skin, the barrel of the pistol tracing the line of his throat above his shirt collar. When he tips his head back slightly in encouragement she laughs, low and husky, and lets it dip to nestle against the hollow of his collarbones. “More?”

“ _Please_.” He scarcely recognises the sound of his own voice.

(It would be so easy, he thinks, to move his hands and give himself what he needs -- he could do it so easily, and yet it seems impossible to disobey her, even without the tacit warning of the pistol and the intensity of her gaze fixed upon him. He may not know what it is they are doing, does not know if she knows any more, and yet he is certain that he trusts her with everything he is.)

The steel dips lower yet, trails down his chest. He wonders suddenly if it is possible to shake and be perfectly still all in one breath, stomach churning with anticipation as she moves with torturous slowness. When the barrel grazes the head of his cock his hips jerk involuntarily, startled at the cool touch against burning flesh, but when he settles back she makes a small approving sound. “Go on,” she coaxes, holding it steady.

It’s awkward, trying to find the right angle; his first few abortive thrusts give him only enough friction to tease, make him groan in frustration. When the gun moves away he nearly sobs, afraid she will deny him further, but then it nudges one of his hands, and he understands. Wrapping his fingers around his aching length _does_ make him sob, the sensation a relief after being teased for what feels like an eternity. He grinds against wood and steel, too far gone to dwell on what he’s doing or he would surely die of shame, too far gone to hold back the sounds that spill from his throat. Her low-voiced praise is a counterpoint, but he only catches one word in every few -- she calls him lovely, wanton, filthy, but above all else hers, and the simple word makes him shudder hardest of all. _Mine,_ she says, as he bucks and leaks and moans, _mine_ and his hips are moving faster, eyes shuttering as the sensations threaten to overwhelm him, _mine_ and it’s more than he had ever imagined, more than he’s ever known and he cries out, something that might be her name or merely inarticulate longing as _more_ becomes _too much_ and he can no longer fight the rising tide, but she’s murmuring her approval and so it’s alright, must be alright, and his head falls back, her name an inarticulate plea falling over and over from his lips as he shudders and shakes and finally, finally spends, all over his hands and his breeches and his freshly polished pistol.

He comes back to the soft touch of her hands, a damp cloth gliding gently over his skin to clean him up and the warmth of her body pressed against his own. When she pulls away he whimpers, but she only takes enough time to pull her chemise back over her head before returning once more to curl against him. It’s oddly soothing, her warmth and softness a contrast to the remote woman who’d held him at gunpoint, and yet he realises he’d wanted her no less then, _loved_ her no less then -- that none of it had been unwelcome. If anything, it had been just the opposite. It’s baffling; he had never imagined that such a thing might arouse him, never even imagined such a thing might be done. And he had thought that she must have known, somehow, but there’s a hesitation in how she leans into him now that makes him reconsider.

“Did you … like that?” he asks quietly, into the silence that’s growing tense and heavy between them.

Her fingers still briefly on his chest before she resumes tracing whorls of hair. She's clearly thinking, and when she does speak it's slow, measured. “It was nothing I would ever have imagined doing, but I did. And that _you_ liked it -- that made it even better.” She lifts her head, looks at him, her eyes like emeralds in the dimness and a shadow of something uncertain flickering across her face. “Is that wrong, do you think?”

He thinks of the unfurling wonder of it all, such a contrast to the visceral heat of arousal that it had accompanied -- thinks of how hard he’d been, just from the taste of her in his mouth and her cries of pleasure and the unyielding pressure of steel, to how his orgasm had been all the more intense for the slide of cool metal against his skin and her heated gaze fixed unblinkingly upon him, and laughs quietly, surprising them both. “My dearest and most beloved wife,” he murmurs, as he brushes a thumb across the worried crease at one corner of her mouth, “how could something that feels so right be wrong?”

“I don’t understand.”

He absorbs that in silence, considering -- wondering if he dares, wondering if he wants to dare. But he remembers pale cords brushing against paler skin as he’d undressed her, and the vivid imaginings that had accompanied such an innocent sight, and swallows down suddenly resurgent nerves. “Would you like to?”


End file.
